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As Aristotle said "It is the mark of an educated mind to entertain a thought without accepting it." I believe it fits rather well here.

Just a note on dismantlling such a tower: my father's company dismantled 1 bunker in Hannover and it took them 3 months. Everything hat to be done with water cutters. The blocks that were cut waighed about 2 tones a piece. The issue is that the bunkers are build in such a way that they can't be torn down any other way. The Americans tried blowing the bunkers in Hannover.

This guy whose comment you responded to is a good example of why I've been more annoyed by anti-Wehraboos than actual Wehraboos lately. Just because I am interested in studying a piece of Wehrmacht equipment does not mean I am trivializing negative aspects of the Nazi regime. Is the fact that a Tiger tank or an ME 262 was probably assembled at least in part by slave labor relevant? Definitely. Is it an important aspect to consider when I ask about the combat effectiveness of these weapons systems? Mostly not, unless aspects like sabotage or poor training of the slave labor come into play. There are a lot of people who don't know much about military history and don't have the patience to learn it who still want to boost their egos. Instead of taking the time to learn proper context for things, why not just yell loudly about how virtuous you are because you hold the right beliefs, and therefore how bad anyone who opposes you is by implication? It's a cheap, tawdry rhetorical technique and I frankly am sick of it, but it's hardly uncommon.

I hope to someday leave a comment good enough to warrant a response video, maybe i'll try to do it with out insults.

I love commenters who’s entire expertise of history, firearms, tanks, etc. hinges on, “I was in the military!”

Like "Being in the Austrian Army" is some relevant citation of authority to AA defenses constructed 75 plus years ago. Those bombers were coming in at anywhere from 5k meters, British at night; to 7k meters Americans in daylight. By putting the AA guns on top of 35 meter towers, low hIlls a mile or two away ARE NOT EVEN REMOTELY A CONSIDERATION. PERIOD. FULL STOP. They ALSO were providing immediate access to extensive Air Raid protection facilities. The ones in Berlin could hold up to 3,000 people; many of whom were post raid Civil Defense workers ie. rescue teams, paramedics, etc. ALL you did was "Virtue signal" your complete and utter ignorance. Gentlemen. Your response was far more restrained than mine would have been. Kudos for keeping your cool (and a straight face) debunking the idiot trolls claims. Keep up the good work.

I was watching this video in the background and that censoring sound scared the heck out of me.

To paraphrase the US Army's Air Defense Artillery branch history, the purpose of ADA is not to shoot down individual planes but rather to deny a given volume of airspace to the enemy. Putting towers in the city allow protected guns in the city to better deny the airspace over the city.

Flak towers also make a known hard-point of defence... therefor limiting directions of approach. Good vid!

I have had "discussions" with people who get all their history watching PBS and History Channel "documentaries" about AAA oder FLAK defenses. The often ridiculously inappropriate footage that is inserting with the dialog seems to be taken literally by a lot of people. I have seen multiple instances where footage of a light, trailer mounted multi-barrel AA was inserted while the presentation was about heavy bombers. Sure, a 2 cm flakvierling firing at night looks cool, but such a weapon simply does not have the range to fire at the heavies. Lots of misconceptions, and far too many people believe anything they see on TV (or see/hear on the internet for that matter). There are three models of learning, the man who learns from reading, the men who learn from example, and the majority who have to pee on the electric fence for themselves.

Everything I know about Flak Towers I learned from playing Medal of Honor: Airborne. Great level.

When commenting in the KZfaq comments section, always go all out. Troll like a Russian bot and scream like a 12-year old playing video games. YOU ONLY LIVE LIFE ONCE!

You guys are too good. Paying so much attention to answering some stupid comments!

To the extent that they were used as propaganda it might be fair to see it as a way for Germany to show the people of Vienna that Germany was doing something to protect them from bombers and to remind them that they were under attack and needed to be ready to fight. Yes, they could also be a show of force but I think its a bit overly simplistic to claim they were just there to scare the locals.

Hi I was also in The Military. Actually, the Char B1 Bis was the most bestest tank ever and even a single one could stop an entire German division cold in its tracks. Citation:I think multi-gun tanks are cool.

The "hills around the city" would be an ideal staging site for self propelled surface-to-air missile batteries, but I don't think the Wehrmacht had many of those in the mid 1940s.

8:12: I come from Südtirol (South Tyrol) in Italy, and there are actually dozens of former German Flak sites all over the Alpine mountains surrounding the capital city of Bozen/Bolzano. I once worked for a farmer whose farm is located on a mountain slope facing the city, and there is a flak position a few hundreds metres up the mountain from his farm. He told me that his two boys once went playing there and came back with a rusted 88mm shell (apparently, they left the thing leaning against the wall of the house until a routine inspection by the Carabinieri (police); the Carabinieri were shocked, immediately evacuated the family and called their explosives experts to remove the thing). Point is: you can have flak batteries in the mountains, and the Germans did.

Excellent collaboration video, and a good measured response that didn’t end up trading insults with the original poster. Well argued. We had similar arguments in the UK about ack-ack fire during the Blitz.

Yeah, I think reinforced concrete is in English the most used term for "Stahlbeton". Really good and from my point absolutely plausible explanations. Thank you both for your great effort!

Great video lads. There is still a WWII AA battery on the Isle of Dogs in London, and sure enough it's in a park, which was a park at the time. The park itself was in the middle of the largest expanse of flat ground & river in London and close to the main strategic target; the docks. The battery suffers all the disadvantages regarding ammunition storage, etc you mention, but the problem was dealt with by concrete walls and buildings. It doesn't seem to have been hit; not every German pilot had Bismark's expertise in IL2. The reason, I think, why it, and other AA guns in London were not on towers is that London has quite large parks. My grandfather told me there were large AA batteries in Regent's Park (he was a firewatcher, so it was his business to know) and that park's longest axis is 1.5 km whereas the longest axis of the Augarten in Vienna is less than 900 metres, and the buildings around it considerably higher (London was very low rise). The size of the parks and the short buildings would have given gunners wide arcs of fire, not necessarily available in Vienna. In the modern London that would imply that any AA defence would also have to be tower mounted, now that the city has become more high rise.

The war against the trolls begins... Bernhard and Bismarck!

Dunno about their use but the first time I saw the one in Hamburg, I was blown away by it's scale.

This is an intelligent and respectful reaction to an emotional, yet insightful comment. When dealing with cultural and historical topics, especially "this" history, it is inevitable that one might pull up some rather personal, vitriolic, and rather nasty feelings, these things happen. But it's also always possible to give things time, to let them chill, and to reflect, upon historic things like propaganda, slave labor, poor grammar and spelling... Well done gentlemen.

Informative and interesting discussion, thank you for inviting us.

The USAAF FLAK! training video is fascinating. So is the USAAF "side gunner" training video. They add considerable perspective to the discussion.

great video. I suspect the reason or one of the reasons there were no flack towers around the Rhur was the smoke from the industry, as they realised that the RAF had managed to miss it by miles for that very reason during the early war years. Just a thought. Keep up the good work, Always enjoy it.

As the German wikipedia page on the Flaktürme mentiones: these towers managed to halt the advance of Russian forces around them in the Battle of Berlin.

People who think that being in the armed forces qualifies them to make counter points is rather silly. As the chieftain says, him being a tanker has nothing to do with his knowledge of ww2 tanks and their usefulness. I fail to see how any level of training in the modern austrain army would qualify someone to comment on the effectiveness of WW2 anti air emplacements since, even if the commenter was in and air defense unit, modern AA is vastly different in implementation and ability compared to their ww2 counterparts. Not to say that being in the armed forces precludes one from making counter points. But arguments should be backed up with facts and logic not with claims of expertise.

1st Flak Division in Berlin located in Flak Towers was best armed division in Berlin Defense area in march 1945 , source Anthony Beevor "La Chute de Berlin"

I applaud you guys taking on this comment. Regardless of the insults it's good to counter people who disagree with you when there disagreement is not absurd. 👍 Another reason a flake tower would not work on a building, logically you'd have to reinforce the building otherwise if the bomb collapses the building the tower goes with it. So after all that you might as well of built the while damn tower.

Where would you rather be, in the Flack tower or in the B-17?

Many thanks for this video, and all the trouble you go to. I am only sorry that I did not have this access to knowledge when I was at school. No school kid today has any excuse for failing an exam, (if they have the internet). Kind regards and greetings from Africa.

I was on the top floor of the flak tower in Hamburg recently. The Nazis had to do something about the bomber stream coming into the Reich. Those flak towers were not useless at all. The served to direct the Allied bombers into killing zones. The Luftwaffe and the Flak batteries were very, very efficient in downing those bombers. The 8th Air Force lost almost 5,000 bombers and could not get crews replaced fast enough. Schweinfurt, Nurnberg etc. up to 40% losses, each with a ten men crew. The U.K. did even worse. It lost about 8,000 bombers all in all. By the end of '44 the Luftwaffe itself had run out of crews, but not out of planes. So, making a blanket statement of how useless those towers were doesn't hack it with me. The numbers tell a different story.

Kudos for facing down your harsher criticism.

From using a telescope to look at the stars you quickly learn that in a built up area locations that look like they have an uninterrupted view of the sky simply don't. Having a purpose built tower resolves this by getting you above the surrounding buildings and also provides accommodation for all of the other supporting equipment, crews and ammunition. I would also guess that short of a direct hit even the biggest bomb is not going to damage such a solid structure and the top where the guns are situated will be out of the direct blast of near misses. Nowadays it probably wouldn't be a good idea because a concentrated target would be 'smart munitioned' in short order but in the 1940s looks like a bloody good idea. Maybe they did help raise the morale of the inhabitants but that is an equally valid purpose.

Considering how many medieval castles still exist today, these flak towers will still be around in a thousand years. Maybe buried under the jungle or at the bottom of the ocean but still intact.

Big (anti-aircraft) guns have also a big recoil problem, keeping the guns steady. This problem can be handled better on an AA tower than on a random hill. It's also better to feed in the ammo by an elevator system from a safe ammo storage (bunker), so the bunkers were some sort of AA cruisers on land.

I'm going to visit Vienna, also Budapest in a few weeks and I'm especially looking forward to seeing Flakturm.

I have an utterly enormous amount of respect for these behemoths. Something so satisfying about seeing these things stand in defiance against everything, bombs, artillery, 150 tonnes of explosives detonated in one which only managed to crack it in 2 and sink it a bit.

I suspect that guy is just virtue signaling. A current year favorite past time for people with too much time on their hands. Keep up the good work, guys!

I have been in the austrian army. As such I can say it's the prime place to learn about useless for military purpose. There are a few corners that would make for a good laugh in any encounter (others to be fair would be a capable fighting force).

I think a very important point that gets overlooked is that flak towers, or Hochbunker in general are very cheap compared to underground bunkers, construction wise. So in order to figure out the actual value you have to take other things into account for example if the city in question has a large underground subway network that can be used for sheltering civilians or not. If not building an above ground bunker is the fastest and cheapest way of creating shelter. Those bunkers are also quite common. The flak tower is the logical extension of a common type of shelter in that regard.

As a former Australian soldier (Being ex-military has no bearing on the argument as I was not Anti-air, nor Flak Leader of a 1943 gun group) and military history enthusiast of the era from US Civil War to current times I agree that the Flak Towers were a practical asset response to gun solution coordination, protection of crews, protection of equipment and a shelter for people. How they were built was typical of the time with elements (or wholly) of forced labour being involved. These towers would have been popularised as an easy demonstration of how the the political regime was protecting "you" but they did protect but propaganda was not the purpose, rather a minor player. The point about the load (weight) bearing design specifications is also valid. I work in the communications industry these days and a fibre optic linked mobile site on a building requires strengthening every time, so having heavy guns on top of a civilian structure would not be practical without significant extra works. PS: When are you reprinting the Panzer book for auslanders? 😜

As to what you said at about 10:00, about regular buildings not being able to handle the stress of those guns firing: Completely agree. People don't really understand just how fucking huge and substantial a >12 cm gun is, let alone how much force is released when firing one. Remember Newton's third law; these machines are hucking a 50 kg object eight to ten kilometers into the sky (further, if the bursting charges didn't go off). The recoil force involved is going to be stupendous. Now picture a single mount with two of these things on it. That's not even a gun anymore, it's a significant piece of industrial equipment. Not the sort of thing you just put on your rooftop.

Dedicated, purpose-built gun emplacements do make sense - you can't just put them on streets or on roofs. But they're twice or 4x as tall as they needed to be for AA. Civilians and workshops would be safer, and better distributed, in regular (probably cheaper) underground shelters. They had more urgent needs for all that steel and concrete and labor. If they weren't great for propaganda then yeah, they were kinda useless or, more accurately, the overkill was useless. (Probably Speer thought they would look nice and Nazi.)

I heard something on the radio the other day. Is it true that the land owners really can't demolish the old flak towers because the amounts of explosives that it would require would also end up destroying adjacent buildings in the same neighbourhood? If this is is true, then "built to last" is certainly a bit of an understatement

I think in Berlin they even shot down from a Flaktower at approaching Russian Tanks and stopped an advance at least for some time.

I remember visiting Vienna's Flakturm in Augarten and was told by to German speaking guide the efficiency of the Flaktower was only 4% or even less. It was more like a sturdy anti-aircraft shelter.

Bernhard and Bismarck . I like your videos . Learning about Flak Towers is interesting even if some of the information is Missing . Thank you for giving me your thoughts about the Towers . I will never have the chance to visit these places so even the Images alone are valuable to me . Perfection is not required for my Use . Keep up the good work . Please tell us about the Chocolate , I must have missed that part . I like Dark Chocolate myself .

wow...How to school trolls on flak towers...

Some points on putting FLAK installations on existing buildings that nobody seems to have mentioned: 1) Tall buildings in cities in the 1940s were moderately rare. They were clustered in the center of the city. They also weren't generally all that tall by modern standards, even in Europe which until recently has largely eschewed "skyscrapers" in most urban centers. 2) Putting air defenses in the center of the city means that they are farther from the planes at the start of (and thus the median of) the bombing run in many cases. A longer side distance means a lower gun training angle. This means it will take the shell longer to reach the attacking bombers. It also may mean that you can't reach the altitude of the bombers because the bomber height will be out of range at the needed deflection angle. 3) As well as not being designed for high roof loads greater than the original design limit, buildings tended to burn. cf the British night raids with incendiaries. 4) Relevant to 2 and 3, if the building right next to you starts burning, there is a moderate chance that your building will too. A burning building makes a poor FLAK tower. A completely burned build makes an even less effective FLAK tower. Putting FLAK installations in surrounding hills could have the reverse problem of putting them in the center of the city: a) They could be too far out to get a good angle on the bombers when they started the bombing run. As mentioned, FLAK before the bombing run was largely avoidable, and would have come close to being "for propaganda purposes". b) They also would not have been useful as bomb shelters except to the crews and some local herders or farmers; the population density is much less in the hills. c) Possibly the logistics of resupply could have been more difficult, costing valuable motor transport fuel if nothing else.

It is often discussed how some nations took incorrect lessons in military doctrine after the First World War, leading to struggles in the Second World War. But you don’t hear as much about failures to interpret the Second World War as much. Could you do a video where you discuss examples were nations learned the wrong lessons from the Second World War and how that adversely affected their military doctrine in the post war period?

The Towers that are dominant/very visible aren't the only Towers in Vienna. For example, there is one in Stiftskaserne (Military barracks), that you'd miss if you don't look for it. There used to be a Train System from Westbahnhof to the Towers to resupply them with ammo. Each Tower could also shelter 40.000 People (wiki states 30k, but I am quite certain that in Haus des Meeres they Claim it's 40k). They certainly were built to impress the People and uphold the morale. But one more usefulness was that Bombers Crews on their final Approach were more frightened - some would fake techical Problems (Robert S.Macnamarra talsk About Curtis Lemay in that respect - for pacific Theater) or miss their target (the cheiftain talks About AA guns on tanks, that aren't meant to take down planes in one of his Videos). Finally: not all usefullness is measurable.

Didnt it take the british three times to blow up the Flak tower in Berlin - Tiergarten? The soviets could blow a hole into it during the actual battle with their biggest guns. The things are so strong that, if Hitler and his SS took over one of the towers and barricaded themself in their they could have propably survived one or two days longer after the surrender of the rest of Berlin. The soviets would first have to get the explosives to blow it open which wouldnt be your average satchel.

Germany managed to have the best ground-based AA guns in WW2. allied bombing raids were extremely unsucesfull and very dangerous for their crew. At the end of the day, despite the civilian bombing campaigns and the massive bomb runs against many german cities, the western allies only managed to reduce german production by a 6%. With all that in mind i really don't think germans were that much improvised in their AA warfare, so if they built FlakTowers they shurely had pretty good reasons to use their extremely limited resources in that

Good to see another video from you 2. Very well answered the only thing I can add would be the weight 128 and 105 mm guns twin turrets Crush some buildings Malone when you recoil happen. he would shake the building apart

If your opponent is a propeller driven bomber it is a good design. A napalm bomb or explosive must hit spot on a tower to make a real damage whereas a hill placed is exposed even in a pit for ground blasts. They did not use proximity fuse , shells existed in the later years of the war but was not distributed to bombs so the sturdy construction prevented carpet bombings being effective from high altitude. These were also not alone, belin had several in groups of various size. The shells were piled in a safe storage and provided a shelter so overall its much better than a ground placed

Hi, excellent video - team-work very well done ! You should do more videos together. Not sure, if you covered this already: what about invasion of Crete ? Would be a highly interesting topic for both of you. German air-force view - German para landings - German mountain-troops - English and Anzac defence - fierce local civilian defence - British Navy denfence - impact of decoding Enigma, evacuation of the British troops ... would you agree ? A couple of videos would be required to capture key aspects of this WW2 battle ...

Any major undertaking will be co opted for propaganda.They were shelters that still stand.And the 'slave labour' is'nt so easy to quantify.My Grandfather was captured at Dunkirk and was a POW at a a large 'Prison camp' in poland,he survived the the poor rations and disease of camp by working as 'slave labour' outside the wire.It was'nt a 'concentration camp like Auschwitz or a' death camp' but the survival rates over six years weren't good.

Good one, gents. I have read that there were plans to construct decorative facades on the outer walls of the oblong Flaktürme after the war was won (for the Vaterland), transforming them into monuments to the vainglorious conquest. Throughout history, there have been functions of domination, repression and celebration of superior strength associated with fixed fortifications, sometimes manifest in specific architectural features, especially associated with gates for instance. Were there not smaller structures to elevate Flak guns over surrounding terrain which may be referred to as flak towers?

I remember when the one in Hamburg heiligen Geist Feld was dismantled. First control explosion, nearly no effect. Than it was Jack hammered, taking long time. Those walls were solid 3.5m I believe roof 4m. The steel reinforcement was incredible, that's why the demolition took I believe nearly 2 years. My grandmother was a gunner on a 12.8 cm and she told me she hat to fire in a specific way that not all 4 fired same time. So using a normal building would be impossible due the weight of guns ammo, recoil of those guns. I was told that you can feel the vibration of those guns in the whole building

In 2008 I lived in Klosterneuburg and stumbled on an article about a 88mm flak position in the Wienerwald Northwest of Wien. I am sure it was connected with the larger caliber guns in the Flak towers in Vienna. Just FYI.

Name a better duo!

Random fact: It was known that the Flaktowers were build to last therefore Friedrich Tamms had the idea to use them as giant memorials for the fallen soldiers. E.g. the one in the Augarten would have been cased with black marble plates. The names of the fallen soldiers would have been written (in wooden letters) on these plates. I read this in the book "Nur in Wien by Smith". If you like such storys and speak German (haha) follow me on Instagram "WiensGeschichten".

Really interesting gents ... from a former RAF boy lol... not WWII era 80s - 2000s lol ... fascinated with all this I was stationed briefly at the former Luftwaffe, Gatow air base 1984 and it was an amazing place. Stone heads of all the leaders at the time were fixed above the entrances to the buildings ... and on one building one head had been destroyed... no prizes for guessing who that was! An amazing city Berlin and at the time so much and I’m. Sure still is a fascinating place in so many ways, history and art and architecture. Another thing I would like to find out is, is there any truth in a rumour that the basements to the barrack blocks at Gatow were used as a refuge by the German military when the soviets were advancing and that the soviets opened all the sluice gates of the rivers allowing the water table to rise and therefore drowned the people in the basements? Those old barrack blocks were very creepy in some ways, the one I stayed in was for temporary personnel and it was pretty much undecorated or changed since the war. The floors in the corridors wooden parquet and in our room, on the walls were racks to hold the former Luftwaffe personnel’s weapons!! I wish I’d taken some photographs. At the time I was there RAF Gatow as it was called then, was very close to the eastern border and had a lot of very sensitive equipment for intelligence gathering during the war. I was cleared from a security point so that I could work there but all we did was fit electrical cable ducting into a building that was totally empty and nothing to see. When I got back to my base in the U.K. i had to go through a special deindoctrination procedure ... all very interesting

It's always a pleasure to see how much attention the two of you pay to details and how often you actually take your time to respond to criticism. Even if it's less polite

Another important point about Flak placement is how to ensure the shrapnel front he hundreds of misses as well as part of bombers and unexploded ordnance doesn't fall onto the are you want to protect. Thus placing the flak towers centrally would have allowed for a 360 degree field of fire. Because IMO the goal was to stop the bombers before the flew directly above the city. As for the propaganda purpose of flak towers. Of course they had a propaganda purpose. But in my opinion that was just one more point for why they were erected where they were. There is little point after all in building those towers in places where no one can see them if you want to convince your population that those towers will keep them safe.

Useful information, clearly presented. This is a topic that I find fascinating. I've never actually seen one, but I have taken a nice walk-around (outside) of the Kriegsmarine headquarters bunker in Kiel. So yeah, very large structures made with that heavily reinforced, super-hardened concrete will probably be around forever. (I almost forgot! Nice job, fellows. Thanks!)

Flak towers did tremendous damage to Soviet armor during the Battle of Berlin, as well as providing refuge to thousands of civilians. Is this not so?

Thanks for your excellent technical and historical point. As you say, flaktürme are logical : concetrated AA firepower against concentrated attack formation (the bomber stream technique), in a dedicated, hence efficient building. What shall not be missed is that military reinforced concrete german military building of WWII vintage are very sturdy, and highly difficult to destroy by air attack. In France, the submarine pens of La Rochelle had been a priority target for the allied air forces, with dozens of techniques tried to destroy them, including remote-controlled planes, and they are still in one piece today. A flakturm would have been a more difficult target to hit, its footprint is smaller than a submarine pen, there is not a wide opening at one end where you can try to aim a blockbuster bomb to go inside and blow up into the facility, there is not a wide surface on its upper side to aim for a blockbuster bomb to penetrate through the concrete and blow up inside to destroy everything, and the thickness of the concrete wall was enough to protect the people inside from classical bombs. It is, in fact, a well-thought military building, far away from a propaganda stunt. The only way which could have been possible to disable a flakturm might have been to try to hit it as close as possible with a blockbuster bomb to shake the foundations by the sismic waves of the explosion of the ordnance and try to make the building collapse or topple over with it. But this is a theoretical guess from me, and might be completely false from a civil engineering point of view. Anyway, blobkbuster bombs were scarce, and they were used on more important targets. The only limitation of those towers were the ones of the guns manned inside, but that was the common problem of all AA guns of WWII: accuracy, rate of fire, hitting power, fired to kill ratio for the shells. But as you said, dedicated and concentrated AA firepower against contentrated air attacks, with additional protection for the gunners and the ammo inside, that was pretty logical.

There is one aspect which gave many germans the impressions that the AA guns were mostly useless: The ability of the B 17 to absorb damage. I read and heard quite a few times that germans got demoralized because it looked to them as if the american bombers were invulnerable to all the AA fire thrown at them. They simply could not see from the ground all the damage done to the bombers, they could only see those immediately going down and these were not that many because of the toughness of the B 17.

I had no idea how complex AAA emplacements were in WW2 until I found one in the woods. I saw a mound off in the woods near an existing Air Force Base and I went to look. It was really complex, it had elevators and steel cabinets (ammo?) and wires, wires, wires coming out of conduit everywhere. The gun mounts were there but the guns long gone.

They also put radar on the towers if the pictures I have seen are correct.

The Gesundbrunnen Flak Tower is amazing, especially when you see how little damage the soviet army did when they tried to take it

The radar / firecontrol system required data from all 3 towers to get a 3d radar picture. This required somewhat of a triangle placement. Further all 3 radars needed to be on the same elevation above sea level. For this reason not all towers where the same hight.

The hills around vienna are mentioned several times, but all the hills i remember are to the west and north. I don't remember any from the east, south east north east. So if you want to try to deny a direct apporach to the city, and only rely on hills there is a big gap. Something else i was missing in both the "question" and the response: just because those towers were build and used doesn't mean that the hills were without AA guns. Just a tiny google search made me find pictures of AA guns at Kobenzl, Nußberg and Hohe Warte. (some of the hills mentioned)

An additional argument against guns in open placements on ground level, is that the concussion would break the windows around the park. Granted, this seems like a small consideration when at war and when struck by a bombing raid. But not all raids, that the flaktowers were to engage with guns, would cause damage in the near vicinity of the towers. Therefore, if it was an open battery, even though the battery was not in the target zone, it would break the windows all around, regardless - adding to the damage caused by the raid.

A Great response to the Statement 👍👍👍.

The Berlin towers were part of the defense grid for Berlin. Putting them on towers gave them a 360 degree firing arc for the 4 x 128mm flakzwilling mounted on the roof. These were also used at anti-tank guns (same size as the jagdtiger) in the final assault of Berlin. Smaller AA guns (20mm flakvirling and 30mm single flak guns were mounted in the swallows nests below the main gun deck. From a propaganda point of view, building them was admitting that the enemy could bomb Berlin, something Herr Meyer promised would never happen. As air raid shelters and above ground bunkers, they worked quite well as even the heaviest Russian howitzers couldn't damage them. After the war, the British were determined to destroy the zoo tower (a G type flakturm) and it took over 4 months and 3 attempts. The first took 25 tons of dynamite and failed to destroy the building. The last attempt required extensive drilling of the walls and packed the holes with 35 tons of explosive. for some reason, they never got around to destroying the others. From a modelling point of view, there is now a 1/35 scale model of the 128mm flakzwilling used on the Berlin flak towers.

If they haven't done so, they should re-purpose them, possibly dedicating a small area as a museum and then the rest into shopping malls with roof top bars or gardens/parks. Just thinking out loud.

Loved your original video! I would think Area denial is the greatest benefit of the flak towers, they simply deny access to that area by large military forces.

Flakturm IV built in Hamburg in 1942. Hamburg fire storm July 1943 Did the flakturm work?

Each 127/61 Flakzwilling 40 gun weighs 4800kg

Regardless of flaktowers' usefulness, i think it's evident that they are cool as fuck.

Unfortunately, there aren't many left... but I'd be interested in hearing from British, American and Canadian WWII bomber crews with regard to the effectiveness of flak and flak towers.

A interesting video gus ! would have loved a more detailed look into them but I will check out the orginal video.

Great discussion and thanks for the research.

Vienna is pretty flat. I think the hills around are to far from the center for effective flak fire (Just my opinion)

I think that the most important point was missed here. If the flak towers were under local command, then they would not be effective as they would have little or no warning due to the hills. BUT, they are not under local control. They are part of an integrated air defence system. Any bombers headed towards Vienna would have been detected crossing the English Channel by radar and then they would have been tracked all the way to Vienna. The towers would have had at least two hours warning that their could be an attack. Then if you put radar stations on top of the hills, the flak towers would know the size, direction, speed and altitude of the attacking formation before they even came into view. They would then just be waiting for the enemy to come into range. They would not be useful against low level Mosquitoes, but against Lancasters and B17s they would be a serious threat.

Last fall I took part in a tour of the inside of one of the last standing AA-towers in Berlin. Well only half standing. The 1st series of AA-towers had a dual use in mind. They had large "windows". It was planned to reuse them after the war for malls, cinemas and so on.

Flak Towers in Ruhr.. I can tell you that there are a few in Duisburg. Especially in the Western Part across the Rhine River. In the city of Rheinhausen i have found 4 or 5 so far around the old Krupp Steel Area. Also you have some Flak Towers a bit upstream in Uerdingen at the Bayer Chemical Plant. Those towers in the Chemical Factory are build in the Areal. Have fun finding them on Google.

Consider a medieval castle keep built much stronger than any modern building. Dover castle keep had to have huge brick built barrel vaults installed to withstand the shock of firing black powder cannons during the French Revolutionary/Napoleonic wars (cannot remember exactly when they were installed). Bearing this in mind what modern or early 20th C. building would be able to withstand the shock of firing any modern-ish artillery piece? Having seen the muzzle blast of a 105mm pack howitzer I would have thought the muzzle blast of an AA gun would have been enough to cause significant weakening of the building fabric let alone the recoil! A thought that just hit me is why we didn't try to build something like FLAK towers in or around London rather than having odd guns dotted around all over the place, my dad remember a single gun that was placed in the turning circle at the end of his road with no other anywhere near...

I think what a lot of people look at is “How many aircraft were confirmed destroyed by flak towers” and not any of the major other benefits they provided. It’s like asking “How many enemy tanks have been destroyed by the Sherman” and completely neglecting its role as infantry support

Thanks for the additional information.

Again thank you both for a well thought out view of military history.

I really don't get what you have against Vienna :'D I find it brilliant haha Nice video though.

I wish to complain!! This derision of Wien is just not on!! Schönbrunn zoo, the inner city, Kaffe mit Schlagobers, Schokoladentorte mit Schlagobers, Alles mit Schlagobers, .... Schlagobers all by itself, .... sigh :-) Vienna may not be like the rest of Austria but it was a lovely city back in '76 last time I was there. You need to apologize to Vienna (the Viennese ego is a little too large to take any damage so no worry about that but the city is a lovely place - and Strauss did write some lovely music...) On another note thinking about your comments on building tops (which now we could put rockets on I suppose) it WOULD then have been possible to put a series of anti-aircraft ships/gunboats in the Danube would it not? Mobile and able to absorb recoil like nothing else. I realize that by that late in the war they'd be vulnerable to low-flying B-25 or Mosquito skip-bombing as well as heavy bombing from altitude.... The hills around Vienna are beautiful, especially in the Fall. Make great places for modern missile air defence batteries but as you say for defending a city you're going to have a ring defense and then more central defenses....Memory fails but I think don't both Moscow and Washington D.C. have concentric air defense systems? Sometimes people also forget the limitations of systems from 75 years ago with regard to range as well...There was a ring of air defense batteries around Vienna but the towers were the last central defense it seems and from their record, no they were not just decorations. For the record I have no appreciation for the regime that built the towers or the program of slave labour Herr Speer oversaw. That doesn't mean I can't appreciate the technology of Germany at the time - in the same way I have no appreciation for Stalin's regime but find the Yak - 3 an interesting and competent air superiority fighter from a technical perspective. Sun Tzu taught us to know ourselves and our ... neighbours ... capabilities..............

I have read accounts from pilots who said you didn't need a navigator, you could fly to Berlin and back by following the flak bursts, Robert Johnson if I recall

The Heavy AA Batteries around my (British) town of Bristol downed just two german planes (and part of a lighthouse), despite Bristol being the fifth most bombed city in Britain. Military historians said their roles were partly propaganda/morale, with the sound, particularly of purdown battery of 3.7-inch guns (and one 40mm gun) on a hill above the city, bringing some comfort to the population, as it meant the bombers were being 'hit back'. The other role I've read that they served was forcing axis bombers to change behaviour. They had to fly higher to avoid the risk posed, thus lowering their accuracy. Not sure if there is any validity to this?